NEW DELHI: A Mulayam-Akhilesh tidal wave has swept through Uttar Pradesh, wrecking Mayawati's five-year rule and leaving the two national parties - the Congress and BJP - marooned. The social coalition forged by the Samajwadi Party led by the Yadav father-and-son duo broke through seemingly impenetrable barriers, once again announcing the resurgent power of regional outfits.

The outcome of the just-concluded round of state elections - one clear and one (perhaps) narrow victory for the Congress amid three resounding defeats - will be damaging for the government at the Centre, portending trouble for its reform agenda and severely limiting the elbow room available to it to present a bold budget next week.

The Congress, its popularity hard hit by a string of corruption and other scandals, failed to cash in on the incumbency disadvantage to dislodge the Akali-Dal-BJP combine from Punjab and the BJP in Uttarakhand. The saffron party snatched Goa from the Congress, leaving India's Grand Old Party holding the consolation prize of this round of state elections: a victory in Manipur.

Its debacle in Uttar Pradesh, where it ended with barely a few seats more than in 2007, ripped open the Teflon coating off the Gandhi family, exposing in particular the vulnerability of its chief campaigner and prime minister in waiting Rahul Gandhi.

The barbs didn't take time coming. "It is another blow to the Congress' pan-India vanity. Rahul Gandhi and his party leaders should now adopt a new language. His statements such as 'we give money to the state governments' smack of arrogance. And people have spoken out against it," Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar told ET, referring to one of Rahul Gandhi's campaign speeches where he blasted the UP government for misusing central funds.

Gandhi's main rival in UP - Akhilesh Yadav - also rubbed it in. "Rahul Gandhi does not understand India's hinterland. How can he succeed?" Although there was a race among Congress leaders to claim responsibility for the setback in Uttar Pradesh, the Gandhi family scion took full responsibility.

LIMITATIONS OF FAMILY'S CHARISMA

"I expect to have victories along the way and I expect to have defeats... I take it in my stride. I think, it is a very good lesson for me," he said.

But the failure in the face of intense campaign by him in UP showcases the limitations of the family's charisma. Even in the family's pocket-boroughs, the Congress faced humiliating defeats. It could not win even a single assembly seat in Sonia Gandhi's Rae Bareily parliamentary constituency, and barely managed to eke out victories in two of the five seats in Rahul's constituency Amethi.

"The campaign was always about how great he (Rahul Gandhi) is, his personal charisma. It was a personal demonstration - he flogged himself across 230 constituencies and addressed public rallies. The Congress has been doing this, focusing on one person, since Indira Gandhi, but it works only in extraordinary situations like emergency, a war or financial crisis," said political scientist Dipankar Gupta.

The Congress' political message - a combination of name-calling to drag down rivals and promises of reservation quotas - only helped Mulayam Singh Yadav emerge as a taller leader among Muslims while its campaign focusing on UP Chief Minister Mayawati's governance failures also ended up benefiting Yadav's party as voters rated it better suited to provide an alternative to the BSP.

The expansion of Yadav's social base in Uttar Pradesh - the Samajwadi Party has this election captured large chunks of every social category - will only make the Congress' revival plans in the state tougher. The last assembly elections in Bihar had exposed the lack of electoral depth for the Congress in the Hindi heartland.

The Congress' defeat in Punjab and the close contest in Uttarakhand, where the NDA overcame the negatives of its five-year rule, clearly showed that anti-incumbency for the Congress-led UPA far overweighed that of its rival. With a series of scandals painting an unflattering image of the central government and anti-corruption agitations fuelling popular anger, the distance between the Congress and the voter appears to be widening.

GOVERNANCE AT THE CENTRE TO GET DIFFICULT

The state election results, many fear, will cast a long shadow on the Centre. Bolstered by their victories, the Opposition (helped by some of the UPA's embittered allies) could harden positions against the central government if only to embarrass it, triggering more legislative deadlocks and weakening its position in policy battles.

"Reforms will suffer at the Centre as the BJP will continue to oppose any measures taken by the UPA government," said Bajaj Auto Chairman Rahul Bajaj.

And the Congress, which had promised to revisit a host of reform measures after these elections, notably allowing greater foreign investment in multi-brand retail, may lose the nerve for a confrontation. The casualty: its governance agenda.